January 2014 Observations – Making the case for secure mobile printing, Breezy’s “Definitive Guide” offers insights via a new, free ebook
On January 16, 2014, Bay-area-based software firm Breezy, one of the emerging leaders in the ecosystem of mobile printing, announced the publication of an ebook entitled “The Definitive Guide to Mobile Printing.” It’s an attractive, well-written and informative document that should move the needle of common industry understanding. And, while not unexpectedly making the case at the end for Breezy’s particular solution for secure mobile printing (the usual “price” for a free download), I recommend the ebook as an informative and, dare I say, “fun” read.
The book’s press release
includes its Table of Contents, which should pique the interest of many an industry participant:
The Definitive Guide to Mobile Printing includes reliable, actionable facts about
The Consumerization of IT
What the Analysts Say
Who Needs Mobile Printing?
Employee Behavior: The Weakest Link
Types of Mobile Printing Solutions
How to Protect Company Data
Mobile Printing Compliance Issues
Making the Business Case for Secure Mobile Printing
Comparing Mobile Printing Solutions
Breezy has a market focus and value proposition, as stated
in the the
document’s final
pages, of “secure mobile printing for enterprises and mid-size businesses that
value ease of use, scalability and security.” Its emphasis on describing mobile
printing customer requirements (as well as some of the other solution
providers/competitors), is what especially stands out for me in the “Definitive
Guide,” and it provides insights into Breezy’s areas of market focus. And with
Breezy this means, of course, that life is complicated a bit by having two
different customers to understand and serve — the IT managers, who are dealing
with security and compliance in their new world of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
and the Consumerization of IT, and the end users, who are actually doing the
printing. The “Definitive Guide” covers both with brevity but also acumen.
History of Breezy
Breezy first came to my attention nearly three years ago when
I was writing for The Hard Copy Observer.
I wrote my first article in March 2011 describing the story behind the company.
Breezy had come on my radar via articles in Venture
Beat and TechCrunch, which reported
on its raising $750,000 of venture capital, and I was immediately intrigued,
for two reasons: first, that any entrepreneur was doing something with printing
from mobile devices, and second, because of founder Jared Hansen’s personal
story of building the company. I found it compelling that Hansen, trained in
the law and working as a corporate lawyer, had been so frustrated with the
dearth of good printing solutions for his BlackBerry that he started a company
to do something about it.
Since then, I have observed Breezy’s steady progress in
filling out its product/solution offering along with becoming a leader in steering
the direction of secure mobile printing for the enterprise.
Hansen remains as company CEO today and, previous to chatting this week about
the ebook and its launch, he and I talked at length in late 2013 as I was
preparing for my mobile printing seminar at December’s Business Imaging Expo in
Las Vegas. In that presentation, I quoted Hansen and Breezy’s view of the
mobile printing world and used his intriguing graphic comparing maturation of
the market to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Customer Focus and Segmentation
Customer Focus and Segmentation
Looking back just a few weeks and building off that December seminar, I wrote a year-end analysis titled “Mobile Printing 2013 — The year inreview — We're getting somewhere!!!” where I not only noted some major industry progress during the preceding 12 months, but I also issued my plea to the industry to become more customer-focused beginning in 2014. My reaction was based in part on the oft-repeated “challenge and opportunity” research data many firms have offered up — numbers about how many millions and now billions of smart devices are out there and how users report needing/wanting to print from these devices but who are, in large, unaware or at least confused by how to do it. The logic follows that given the education and tools to do this printing easily, the number of pages printed will soar, making hardware and supplies vendors happy and offering an escape route from the “death of the PC” trends that are so prominent in today’s technology and business press.
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| The Breezy ebook adds insights into end user mobile printing needs as seen in this example page |
As I should also mention, in what will come as no surprise
to regular readers of Jim Lyons
Observations, I also enjoyed the ebook’s “setup” section featuring a brief historic
perspective of the industry, starting with printing itself and leading into
today’s explosive growth in the mobile space. The “Definitive Guide” also
provides history and background on data security and related compliance issues.
“Cool Company,” Great Book
Near the end of the ebook (page 36 of 38), the guide takes the expected turn of becoming more of a sales document, but this is handled in a forthright style that continues to add to the overall mobile printing story, especially in its comparison chart on the final page. Also included is the news, at least to me, that Breezy is one of Gartner Group’s “Cool Companies” in Imaging and Printing for 2013. (As an aside, I have always enjoyed seeing this “cool” award granted to other companies I cover, including Greenprint and Memjet as well as one of 2013’s other honorees, Eurosmartz, another pioneer of the mobile printing space.)
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| The Breezy ebook final page compares a number of leading mobile printing solutions along a wide front of features and characteristics |
After downloading and reading it (and yes, this was after printing
it!), my impression is that the guide offers the industry a valuable resource.
I encourage my readers to download it from Breezy.com. The download requires
you to provide contact information, also as expected. I asked Hansen how this
will be used and, from the security-oriented leader of this security-oriented
company, he replied in an email, “We will, per our terms and privacy policy,
add them to our newsletter, which goes out twice a month at most and always
includes an unsubscribe link.”
Breezy’s ebook, a 38-page PDF, is probably reaching by
calling itself “The Definitive Guide,” but I found the length “just right” in
terms of getting into some, but not too much, depth behind the important topics
in the business right now. None of those
is more important than the customer needs — again those being both the needs of
IT managers and end users.
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| Printed version of Breezy Definitive Guide to Mobile Printing |
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